Worldwide Day of Action against McDonalds — Sunday 16th October

In Birm­ing­ham, 13 cam­paign­ers met up at mid­day, and staged demos out­side all 4 of McDis­eased city cen­tre stores.

The tour start­ed with the McDev­as­ta­tion store on The Pal­lasades ramp, just off New Street. A large ban­ner was unfold­ed and plac­ards held aloft. Sev­er­al McD‘s staff were insis­tent that we couldn‘t protest out­side their store, but after 10 min­utes, they came back inform­ing us that we could protest after­all, so long as we didn‘t block the door­way! Well, how kind of them to let us protest!! Did they real­ly think we were going to move on just because they didn‘t want us there?!!

After half an hour, the protest turned mobile as we marched down New Street, to the store on High Street. They seemed equal­ly keen to see us! Whilst some pro­test­ers held up posters, oth­ers dis­trib­uted ‘What‘s wrong with McDon­alds‘ and ‘go veg­gie‘ leaflets to the mass­es. Our next stop was the McDeath store inside Par­adise Forum, where we exposed McDom­i­neer­ing for anoth­er half an hour.

The tour end­ed up at the McDeath store on Cher­ry Street, where we were soon joined by anoth­er 6 cam­paign­ers from Food Not Bombs, who set up a free food stall, right out­side!! Free food on offer includ­ed veg­gie burg­ers, fruit and lots more. The protest con­tin­ued along­side the food stall until 4pm. Well over 1,000 leaflets were hand­ed out in total dur­ing anoth­er great day of action which will be repeat­ed again soon!

For more infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign against McDeath, includ­ing how cam­paign­ers won a mam­moth court vic­to­ry against them ear­li­er this year, check out the McSpot­light web­site http://www.mcspotlight.org/
See also http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

West Mid­lands Ani­mal Action
e‑mail: wmids_animalaction@yahoo.co.uk
Home­page:http://www.geocities.com/wmids_animalaction/

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On Octo­ber 16th 2005 Food Not Bombs par­tic­i­pat­ed with oth­er groups in an action out­side McDon­alds near Pigeon Park (St. Phillip’s Cathe­dral) in Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre. Birm­ing­ham Food Not Bombs believes that food should be a right not a priv­i­lege and reg­u­lar­ly serves free food in the city cen­tre to any­one who wants it, home­less or oth­er­wise. Food Not Bombs is an inter­na­tion­al move­ment and also cam­paigns on issues such as pover­ty, home­less­ness, war & mil­i­tary spend­ing, the envi­ron­ment, and glob­al­i­sa­tion.

The day of action was to high­light a vari­ety of issues con­cern­ing the McDon­alds cor­po­ra­tion. Free veg­gie-burg­ers and fruit were served right out­side McDon­alds to lure peo­ple away from buy­ing McDon­alds food, and to engage them in con­ver­sa­tion about the hot McDon­alds issues. The place looked quite emp­ty and we had a lot of sup­port from passers by and some McDon­alds employ­ees! To alle­vi­ate their poor cus­tomer turnout, we thought it would only be fair to lend them sup­port by ask­ing peo­ple to enjoy their veg­gie-burg­ers in the com­fort of their restau­rant..

http://www.mcspotlight.org/

“I feel bad­ly about what I’ve done with young peo­ple. I was the hap­py face on some­thing that was hor­ren­dous.”
‑Geof­frey Gul­liano, for­mer Ronald McDon­ald who lat­er embraced veg­e­tar­i­an­ism.

 

“For the last eight years I have doc­u­ment­ed coer­cion, threats, intim­i­da­tion and manip­u­la­tion by McDon­ald’s and Leo Bur­nett Adver­tis­ing against me due direct­ly to my work as Ronald McDon­ald.” Joe Mag­gard, for­mer Ronald actor, 2003.

Although McDon­alds are not the only cul­prit when it comes to the fol­low­ing issues, their prof­li­gate atti­tude and shame­less adver­tis­ing to young peo­ple has made them stand out from the crowd in the world of cor­po­rate mis­con­duct..

Poverty

Water, ener­gy, and land for crops are resources which can be used to alle­vi­ate pover­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the pro­duc­tion of meat uses up to ten times the amount of these resources as the pro­duc­tion of crops for human con­sump­tion. McDon­alds are now exploit­ing mar­kets in poor­er coun­tries which cul­tur­al­ly do not con­sume large quan­ti­ties of meat. This expan­sion is like­ly to exac­er­bate glob­al pover­ty by increas­ing demand for these already scarce and con­trolled resources. There is often enough land and resources to feed the pop­u­la­tion of a poor coun­try but nation­al debt repay­ment oblig­a­tions force these coun­tries to grow cash crops (for export to wealthy coun­tries) rather than food for the local peo­ple. Eth­i­cal­ly, land should be used to feed peo­ple in pover­ty, not ani­mals for peo­ple in rich coun­tries.

Employment

World­wide, McDon­alds pay many of their work­ers a poor wage and are known for their hos­til­i­ty to trade unions. Even in the UK, the phrase “McJob” has recent­ly been coined to describe any bor­ing, repet­i­tive, soul-destroy­ing, and poor­ly paid job. McDon­alds could do much to alle­vi­ate pover­ty world­wide by pay­ing their work­ers a decent wage.

The environment

The mas­sive and unnec­es­sary amount of (un-biodegrad­able) pack­ag­ing used for McDon­alds meals is pre-req­ui­site for them to oper­ate serv­ing a high turn­around of cus­tomers. Not only is this bad for the envi­ron­ment but it fos­ters waste­ful habits in chil­dren, who McDon­alds relent­less­ly tar­get with their adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

http://www.ronald.com/

Globalisation

The vora­cious spread of chain stores across the west­ern world (in recent years this activ­i­ty has been coined ‘glob­al­i­sa­tion’) has oust­ed many small­er busi­ness­es who can­not com­pete with mass adver­tis­ing and the economies of scale which such large mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from. Although this is the result of free trade and com­pe­ti­tion, increas­ing­ly peo­ple are feel­ing that they have less con­sumer choice, and that their local com­mu­ni­ty or city cen­tre lacks char­ac­ter and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. We are see­ing the bleach­ing of the human rain­bow in our pub­lic spaces.

Healthy Eating

McDon­alds adver­tis­ing tries to pur­vey their food as healthy and ‘nutri­tious’ (all food is nutri­tious) and have recent­ly start­ed serv­ing sal­ads which iron­i­cal­ly are almost as unhealthy as their burg­ers. A high fat diet is direct­ly linked with can­cer and heart dis­ease. The con­cern is that con­sumers are lead to believe that eat­ing McDon­alds meals fre­quent­ly can be ‘healthy’.

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Manchester:

updates from Man­ches­ter’s anti-McDon­alds week­end: crit­i­cal mass and stink-bombs

On Fri­day evening, a crit­i­cal mass of about 20–25 cyclists stopped at 2 McDon­ald’s out­lets for a lit­tle street dance to a mobile sound sys­tem. When they even­tu­al­ly drew the atten­tion of the police to them, the cylists end­ed their tour with a din­ner of deli­cious veg­an burg­ers.

On Sat­ur­day lunch time, at least 3 (pos­si­bly more) McDon­ald’s out­lets in the city cen­tre were stink-bombed. But McDon­ald’s cus­tomers seemed to be sur­pris­ing­ly immune to the stench.

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McDonalds, Nottingham.

After the Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride around Not­ting­ham, a few folks went down to the local McDon­alds, to hand out leaflets and the tell passers by, about the court suc­cess of the McLi­bel Two.

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Day of Action against McDonald’s

A bunch of peo­ple and Ronald McD him­self, turned out to protest against McDon­alds at the bot­tom of Exchange Walk in Not­ting­ham. They bought ban­ners, hand­ed out leaflets, and informed the passin’ pub­lic about the issues: nutri­tion [lack of it], envi­ron­men­tal issues, fast food lit­ter, their busi­ness prac­tices and not least, work­ers rights .…..

McDs leaflet:http://www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/current/wwwmd-uk.pdf

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AntiMcDonald’s Daze in Israel

16th Octo­ber 2005

Some recent his­to­ry, and a report of a high­ly suc­cess­ful day’s protests

(for more pic­tures, see URL at the end)

McDonald­s has been met in Israel with a cer­tain degree of resis­tance ever since it opened its first restau­rant in Ramat-Gan (a Tel-Aviv sub­urb) in 1993, when a group of Anar­chists chained them­selves to the doors and blocked the entrance.

For some rea­son, anti McDonald­s sen­ti­ments here have revolved almost exclu­sive­ly around the issue of ani­mal rights, and only in the last two years or so are we see­ing eco­log­i­cal, con­sumerist & health-ori­ent­ed groups join­ing the cam­paigns (the work­ers’ angle is still miss­ing, sad­ly).

In the ear­ly nineties, the “What’s Wrong with McDon­alds ?” leaflet was trans­lat­ed into Hebrew in a joint effort by the ani­mal rights orga­ni­za­tion “Anony­mous” (nowa­days a derad­i­cal­ized, main­stream, some­what wel­fare-ori­ent­ed orga­ni­za­tion) and an Anar­chist group call­ing them­selves sim­ply “Anar­chist Move­ment”.

How­ev­er, the Inter­na­tion­al Anti McDonald­s Day has been decent­ly observed only in the last 4 years, main­ly through the ini­tia­tives of the Tel-Aviv based group “One Strug­gle”, a Human/Animal Rights Anar­chist group quite sim­i­lar in char­ac­ter to “Green­peace Lon­don”. This group used to hold a reg­u­lar, week­ly vig­il in front of McDonald­s for over a year (quite an achieve­ment in a place like this), and pro­duced a bet­ter, more didac­tic ver­sion of the Hebrew Anti McDon­alds fly­er.

In 2003, One Strug­gle — with the help of oth­er groups orga­nized a crit­i­cal mass bike ride through cen­tral Tel-Aviv, car­ry­ing signs and stop­ping at var­i­ous McDonald­s restau­rants to leaflet passers-by. The bike ride, about 30 peo­ple strong, end­ed in a big­ger demo out­side a cen­tral McDon­alds restau­rant, with 60–70 peo­ple car­ry­ing ban­ners, signs, set­ting up lit­er­a­ture tables and serv­ing free veg­an food.

The 2004 event, although bet­ter orga­nized and includ­ing vig­ils in Israel’­s three main cities (Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem), saw a more or less equal amount of peo­ple take to the streets, but was almost unan­i­mous­ly ignored by all media (gen­er­al­ly, it is worth not­ing that Israel is a very polit­i­cal place as far as con­ven­tion­al Left/Right or Nation­al­ist pol­i­tics are con­cerned, but it has a strong ten­den­cy to down­play and brush aside more glob­al issues, like McDon­alds, which do not fit neat­ly into Israeli Left/Right cat­e­gories).

In 2005, dur­ing the week­end of the 14th-16th of Octo­ber, we orga­nized the most suc­cess­ful Israeli anti McDon­alds Day yet.

In Tel-Aviv, where the main event took place, we gath­ered at noon in the small gar­den on Shenkin st. — one of Tel Aviv’s cen­tral streets, packed with peo­ple on Fri­day after­noons for a gen­er­al anti McDonald­s ‘hap­pen­ing’. It includ­ed activ­i­ties for kids (cre­ative games, street the­ater), free screen print­ing shirts with antiM­c­Don­alds slo­gans, free veg­an food, infor­ma­tion stalls, a big pic­ture gallery dis­play­ing the hor­rors of McDon­alds con­nec­tion to fac­to­ry farm­ing, pol­lu­tion etc, and more. After a cou­ple of hours we marched around 50–60 peo­ple — to the near­by McDonald­s restau­rant on Shenkin st., with signs, bull­horns, drums, ban­ners and fes­tive cos­tumes, and from there to a sec­ond McDonald­s at Dizen­goff Square. The num­ber of passers-by who asked ques­tions and showed inter­est in our mes­sage was encour­ag­ing, and only a hand­ful of peo­ple actu­al­ly entered the restau­rants while we demon­strat­ed and hand­ed out fly­ers out­side.

After the Sab­bath, on Sun­day the 16th, there were anti McDon­alds vig­ils in four dif­fer­ent cities (Haifa, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba and Hert­zliya, where local Green Par­ty activists joined the AR activists). All vig­ils were well-attend­ed, and coor­di­nat­ed by a new ani­mal rights group called She­vi (acronym of Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Israel). In the evening, there was free veg­an food plus a screen­ing of the doc­u­men­tary McLi­bel 2005 with Hebrew sub­ti­tles at the Salon Mazal Rad­i­cal Infos­hop in cen­tral Tel Aviv, with a big turnout as well.

The most sur­pris­ing aspect of the 2005 events, in com­plete con­trast to pre­vi­ous years, was a lot of nation­al media atten­tion regard­ing these protests. The two major Israeli dai­ly news­pa­pers, Yediot Aharonot and Ma­ariv, both ran arti­cles about the events and the gen­er­al world­wide protests against McDonald­s, in their print­ed as well as online edi­tions. Ma­ariv, the sec­ond largest news­pa­per in Israel, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of read­ers, even devot­ed the main arti­cle of its Busi­ness sec­tion, cov­er and all, to the protests. There were inter­views with activists on tele­vi­sion pro­grams — includ­ing one on chan­nel 2, Israel’­s lead­ing chan­nel — and also on sev­er­al radio sta­tions, includ­ing Galei Tza­al­s eco­nom­ic report (that’­s the IDFs radio sta­tion and the most pop­u­lar one in Israel).

We do not know what caused this minor media fren­zy, but we tried our hard­est to take advan­tage of it, and are sat­is­fied that a record num­ber of Israelies have now heard that there is indeed some­thing very wrong with McDonald­s. The cor­po­ra­tion, by the way, main­tained a ‘no com­ment’ pol­i­cy to all reporters regard­ing our actions and our claims.

All in all, we feel these events were fruit­ful, pos­i­tive & enjoy­able, and that a crys­tal-clear mes­sage of resis­tance to the McDonaldiza­tion of the plan­et was con­veyed.

For pic­tures of the var­i­ous Israeli 2005 vig­ils, fly­ers, posters, press cut­tings etc.:
http://photobucket.com/albums/a100/xzoidbergx/Israel%20AntiMcDonalds%20D…

For a sam­ple of Israeli main­stream mediaís report of the events:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L‑3155577,00.html
(from the Yediot Aharonot site)

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact One Strug­gle at:
vegan_politics@yahoo.com /http://www.onestruggle.org
or She­vi at:shevi_liberation@yahoo.com /http://www.free.org.il